THE NIGHTINGALE & THE FIREFLY/PART II
Chance, Romance
Change Everything
Editor's Note: This is the second article in a three-part series on Ashok Malhotra, who retired in December after almost a half-century in SUNY Oneonta's Philosophy Department. In was published in Hometown Oneonta & The Freeman's Journal on March 3-4, 2016.
By JIM KEVLIN • for www.AllOTSEGO.com
ONEONTA – His first snowstorm, magical white flakes falling out of the night sky: It was a pivotal point in his life.
“It was like being in heaven,” Ashok Malhotra remembers.
It was Dec. 21, 1965, and he and Nina Finestone, after cleaning up from his 24th birthday party, had just left the apartment near the NYU campus where he rented a room.
Just three days before, Ashok and a pal – another foreign student – had been chatting in the snack bar in the basement of the Loeb Student Center. “The door opens,” he remembers, “and a beautiful woman walks in.”
“Are you people from Pakistan?” she asks.
“No, we’re from India,” he replies.
“Do you have four wives?”